Dumped my Verizon DSL...

Back when I got it, 3Mbps was okay enough. My area was slow getting ANY high speed internet. I'd been paying through the nose for a dedicated line and 512kbps (.5Mbps) SDSL, and when Verizon's ADSL offered me 3M down and .768 up I jumped on it, figuring to switch to FIOS when it became available.

And now, FIOS will never become available. Cable has won. And today I made a deal with the devil, Service Electric CATV, paying an extra $10/mo to get high speed internet without cable TV. I'm keeping my DirecTV, the only service provider that's never given me any trouble.

Speedtest shows 15.237Mbps down and 1.25 up. No more "retrieving" while streaming Netfix, no more pausing and buffering while watching YouTube. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

I have Cablevision and also pay a lot. Service is good but so expensive. I like getting the free WIFI (optimum) where available. And it's available in a lot of places around me. I also have a cable phone instead of a landline. I have thought about maybe getting a landline but after Sandy hit most of the people around us lost their landline service so I don't know. Paul, for that price are you getting all the movie channels at least?

I have Cablevision and also pay a lot. Service is good but so expensive. I like getting the free WIFI (optimum) where available. And it's available in a lot of places around me. I also have a cable phone instead of a landline. I have thought about maybe getting a landline but after Sandy hit most of the people around us lost their landline service so I don't know. Paul, for that price are you getting all the movie channels at least?

I get all the movie channels. Why?? I do not watch them but Roz (Iwanago) does. I pay way too much. Technology changes and when prices drop for high speed internet, I will drop Comcast like a rock.

I have nothing but good to say about Comcast service. When I first got the triple D I had all sorts of problems but they were due to Comcast taking over another service then and having to fix their messes. Every time I called them I got a real person and a crew sent that day including a Sunday. They eventually had to rewire my house and out at the box but I never got charged for any of it and always got prompt polite service.

If any other service than Comcast was available, I would take it. But it's not. Sure, I have options for TV (Dish and DirecTV), but if I want high speed internet, it's Comcast or nothing. Phone lines are too old and we're too far from the CO.

Why do I detest Comcast? The Grand Rapids area has something like 300 techs. I know more than 20 of them by name, on sight, and can recognize at least another ten without having their name readily available. I am in possession of three supervisors' personal cell phone numbers, one for each shift. At one point, I actually made cupcakes for Jerry's daughter to take to school for her birthday because his wife was in the hospital. No one should EVER be that familiar with the cable company's service technicians unless they work there.

Don't get me started on their "new and improved" phone service, either. You call, you get to talk to a computer. You no longer have to press buttons, you get to answer questions generated by the computer. The only way to get around it is to either let out a string of curse words to make a career Navy man proud in answer to every question, or just keep saying repeatedly "I need to talk to a person." Swearing is quicker...you usually get transferred to a person after the third question. Then it's always a minimum of five minutes on hold before someone picks up. That person rarely, if ever can claim English as a first language. They also are incapable of doing anything out of order on the troubleshooting flow chart. Typically, I know more about A/V and computers than they do.

I use them for internet and TV only (my theory is they keep wanting me to get their phone service so when my connection goes out I can no longer call them multiple times per week to fix it), a non-digital, non-premium TV package they don't advertise and may or may not even still exist. Channels 2-28 only (networks, several shopping, two religious, a public access, and several that no longer show anything), and I pay them $86.99 per month.

It's cheap, because I don't get anything. There are seven watchable channels, and none of them are in HD. Other than shopping and religion, I get CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, WGN, PBS, and ION. No news channels, no sports channels, no movie channels...I used to get TBS and TV Guide, but they moved to HD and now one is another shopping channel while the other is blank. Basically, with the exception of WGN, I get exactly the same channels I got before I had cable, except now I pay for them instead of them being free.

We use Verizon Wireless for 2 cell phones and a wireless internet access. We don't come close to our monthly limits on either the phones or the 'net service. It runs us $148.00 per month. TV is via Direct and the rate seems to change up and down every 6 months...if I gripe loud enough to their customer service. No cable access in our neighborhood.

For those of you who have a satellite dish for TV, I keep hearing that they are unreliable in bad weather--that sometimes in storms they cut out. Is this true or not? I'm currently with Comcast for cable and Internet, but would love to give them less money and monopoly. Is satellite reliable?

I love DirecTV. The only time I have an issue is right before a summer thunderstorm...for a few minutes. It didn't go out for a second during Sandy (until the power went out) and was working fine once power was restored.

I have Cablevision Optimum Boost for Internet. It's extremely fast. It's not cheap...but very fast and reliable. I think they gave me 2 free months after Sandy...without even asking. That or they had no power on Long Island for a long spell. They did call like every 15 minutes with a special recorded message for a few weeks apologizing for the outage...but I didn't have an outage.

For those of you who have a satellite dish for TV, I keep hearing that they are unreliable in bad weather--that sometimes in storms they cut out. Is this true or not? I'm currently with Comcast for cable and Internet, but would love to give them less money and monopoly. Is satellite reliable?

L2B, I have Dish Network. It does, indeed, have problems delivering service during bad weather. We have fairly severe weather in Tennessee, but I spent most of my life on the west coast. Honestly, in your part of the country, I don't think it would be a major issue.

We use DirecTV. We got it in '98. It goes out during a storm maybe once every couple years. Twice it's gone down in the sense that the dish got twisted; one of those was when the house got hit by a tornado, the other was during a really bad storm with high winds. Both times it was fixed in a day or two.

That is offset by the great picture, great service, and great range of channels, including the Root regional sports network.

We have Verizon for wireless and home phones, DirecTV for television, and cable for internet. We also have a Roku for Netflix and other streaming HD.

We are very happy with directv which is currently $133 per month with a whole house HD DVR and 3 other regular HD receivers. No HBO or Showtime but more channels then we can watch. We also pay comcast for phone with unlimited LD and 20mg down Internet about $75 a month. I also have an obitalk device which we piggyback off the Internet for a 2nd phone line free from Google Talk. Pretty happy with this set up.

We use Verizon Wireless for 2 cell phones and a wireless internet access.

My employer provides me with wireless access through Verizon but it's very spotty. It often wavers between 1X, 3G, and 4G and when that happens it has to reset itself and it can take awhile to get reconnected. I must be in a bad area or something.

We use Verizon Wireless for 2 cell phones and a wireless internet access.

My employer provides me with wireless access through Verizon but it's very spotty. It often wavers between 1X, 3G, and 4G and when that happens it has to reset itself and it can take awhile to get reconnected. I must be in a bad area or something.

Verizon defines a "bad area" for connection as anything outside a city with a population of less than 300,00. But they are slowly improving. They were in such a huge rush to roll out their 4G LTE before everyone else that they did it with chewing gum and baling wire...now they're going back and installing properly. It's not uncommon to have exactly what you're describing happen, even within sight of their towers.

Thanks to everyone for your input on satellite dish reliability! It's true that our storms in No. California the past couple of years haven't been too bad, but prior to that, we had some major wind action that knocked out power, uprooted trees, etc., so could also be problematic for a dish. Now that I think about it, there are quite a few trees around my house--not just in my yard but my neighbors', too--so might have a problem with reception here.

We have a Verizon cell tower in the parking lot at work; on my Galaxy S3 I've gotten close to 30Mbps from 50 feet away. That's fun to prank AT&T iPhone users on 3G.

love2bake, as long as there is no tree between the dish and the satellite you'll be fine. I'm in a town named Mountain Top. It is windy. One of the times we lost the dish, we also lost the roof and chimney, and power was out for 2 1/2 days.

What can happen is, during a snow storm snow can build up inside the dish and interrupt the signal. This is extremely rare; cold snow won't do that. It has to be around 32-34 degrees, and the snow has to come from the direction the dish is facing. And it has to be snowing really hard, hard enough to overcome the heat of the dish; 1" per hour or more. In the 15 years we've had the dish, it's happened maybe 3-4 times. I can't remember the last time it happened, but I do remember that it's happened.

In my opinion, weather related interruptions of satellite service are rare and overstated by cable companies. I would consider them to be about equally reliable. My belief is that each consumer should weigh the service, the selection, and the price, then make a choice and don't look back.

I should have said in my earlier post, we live on the east coast of Florida and have frequent and violent thunderstorms especially in the summer. Our Directv satellite service and our previous Dish network service do get interrupted for short periods of time during these t-storms. We also lose power a good bit during these storms so having cable instead of satellite wouldn't make that much of a difference.

I also have Direct TV and love it. The biggest problem I've had is in the winter, if the wind is blowing from the southwest during a snow storm(and it usually does), the dish will be covered with snow to the point where we lose signal. My wife about had kittens when I would climb up a ladder and cross the snow covered roof to broom it off, so I tried a plumbers heat tape to keep it clear. It didn't work well, so now I just shoot a couple muzzle loader balls out of a wrist rocket slingshot to knock the snow off. The dents in the dish don't seem to affect reception much at all.

Smirks..........as one of the last bastion of "TV Antennas" I chuckle. I remember one Christmas getting tons of Dish Tv circulars that I kept leaving around the house. On Christmas morning, the kids....then about 10 &12... had a big package under the tree entitled "Dish TV". Since they had been hounding, like, Forever Dad, they were all excited. Opening the box....there it was..a beautiful glass dish onto which I had painted a TV in Nail polish

A few years later....ok maybe one.i got the Direct guys out here. After 3 hours of peering thru all my trees, they finally gave up on getting a signal.

And today....yes..we have Comcast. I have a bulb garden of 50,000 daffs they had to send their "mole" or whatever they call it 250 linear yards underground to the house. Works fine

Prices in KCMO and KCK are dropping like a rock since KC got selected as the first metro area to get Google Fiber. Right now they are only KCMO and KCK but will start doing the rest of the metro area later. It remains to be seen whether they will be offering the same deal that KCK and KCMO got. You had a choice you could sign a contract and they would wire your house with fiberoptic cable at no charge or you could pay for them to wire your house and they would give you internet service for free.

Comcast did mine fiber optic 2 years ago. They took over another service in my area and the other service was crap and I had tons of problems. Comcast rewired my house from the house out to the street box. No cost. No problems since.

Prices in KCMO and KCK are dropping like a rock since KC got selected as the first metro area to get Google Fiber. Right now they are only KCMO and KCK but will start doing the rest of the metro area later. It remains to be seen whether they will be offering the same deal that KCK and KCMO got. You had a choice you could sign a contract and they would wire your house with fiberoptic cable at no charge or you could pay for them to wire your house and they would give you internet service for free.